


someone's out there, sending out flares

by xxpaynoxx



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:52:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5317724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxpaynoxx/pseuds/xxpaynoxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody notices the pain anymore. Nobody dwells on the lives they’ve taken, nobody remembers how the world looked before they tore it apart with blasters and guns and light-sabers, nobody cares to think about the toll the war can take on a human being.</p><p>But they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in the darkness, all alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is in Anakin's POV, but in third-person. I just had a lot of feelings about Anakin after the war.

Anakin still hears screams in his sleep. He can still feel the rush of adrenaline as he broke through those lines of droids, cutting down hundreds and hundreds of machines that stood in his way. He can still feel the heat from the gunfire on his skin, and he can still smell the scent of blood and gunpowder from the bombs and the dead.

_I’m a monster._

So when everyone is gone, Anakin goes into the ‘fresher and bleeds.

He bleeds for all the others who bled for his hideous cause. He bleeds to get the bad feelings out of his veins. Sometimes, he’s bleeding and he doesn’t even notice anymore. He can’t decipher between the water and the blood running down his arms and to the floor of the ‘fresher, going down the drain along with his despair.

Obi-wan doesn’t know.

Anakin doesn’t have the heart to tell him or Padmé. This is his punishment, he tells himself. This is his punishment for all of the crimes he’s committed for democracy. This is his punishment for being a monster to everyone he’s ever met.

He sometimes sees Ahsoka in his dreams, but she’s always too far away to hear his voice.

He starts to cut higher, on his biceps and his shoulders, because Obi-wan has started checking his wrists. Anakin supposes he suspects him of bleeding himself out, but he isn’t sure.

Then, Obi-wan walks in on him in the ‘fresher, and hell breaks loose.

He’s getting ready to shower. He makes sure to lock the door, and checks three times before taking off his shirt and staring at himself in the mirror. His taught muscles have thin red and white lines stretched across them, and he rubs them and winces at their sensitivity.

He grabs the razor lying behind the disposal, hidden as well as he could manage, and makes an incision on his collarbone. He makes four for the four men he murdered on Jabiim, in the beginning of the war, when he’d seen Obi-wan lying motionless near his ship and his vision had gone red and he’d _lost control_ \--

Tears fall down his cheeks as he covers his face with his durasteel hand, his other hand gripping the razor tightly as the salt hits the metal and slides off to land on the floor of the ‘fresher.

It is then that Obi-wan walks in on him.

Anakin swears he checked that the door was locked, but here Obi-wan is, his fresh towel lying on the floor as his former master’s gaze flits between his chest, with the hundreds of thin, red cuts scattered across his skin, the new incisions he could feel were already dripping blood, and the razor held aloft in his hand.

“Oh, _Anakin_ ,” he whispers, and the razor clatters to the floor as his former padawan lurches forward, breaking into sobs as he practically falls into Obi-wan’s embrace, gripping the back of his shirt tightly with everything he has, as if Obi-wan will just blow away in the breeze.

His former master does the same, leaning up and pulling the man close as they both drop to the floor, Anakin’s head lying on Obi-wan’s shoulder as he sobs. Obi-wan cards his fingers through his hair, and shakes.

“How long?”

Anakin shudders.

“I…I lost count.”

He feels the man’s hand force his tear-stained face to look at him, and suddenly, Obi-wan’s lips are on his in a chaste kiss. Anakin can feel the man’s heartbeat, fast and sharp underneath his thin shirt, and Anakin cups his face with his hands, the metal on skin making Obi-wan tremble, and deepens the kiss.

Finally, Obi-wan breaks away first, but not far enough. He rests his forehead on Anakin’s, and the young man can feel the heat from his former master’s brow as his piercing green eyes stare into his own.

“We’re going to make it through this together, okay?” he whispers, lacing their fingers together. Anakin begins to pull away, but Obi-wan stops him as he grabs the back of his neck with his other hand. His voice is trembling with emotion, and Anakin is floored by it.

He’s never seen Obi-wan show this much emotion.

“We’re going to make it through this together, Anakin. I can’t lose you like this, and I can’t do this without you. I can’t make it without you by my side, and I just…I need you.”

Anakin notices Obi-wan is shaking as his voice wavers, and he nods.

“Okay.”


	2. the fire's out but still it burns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s not one to talk to people about his feelings. It’s always been taught to him to bottle it up, to put your feelings aside to help others. But sometimes, it feels like he’s shattering, especially now as he’s holding Anakin in his arms, shaking and sobbing into his shirt.
> 
> He feels, and he hates it.

Nobody has asked him if he’s okay after the war. Obi-wan knows why; because he’s never shown much emotion. He’s The Negotiator; showing emotion could lead to death in certain situations. People assume he’s fine. Anakin is the emotional one of the pair, and he’s not very good at masking it anyways.

So he turns to the drink.

Qui-Gon allowed him to drink a little whiskey after missions, to loosen him up after he’d been in the battlefield. He allowed himself one glass per day, in the morning. Then, it grew to two glasses. Then three. Then four.

He grew numb by the time it became a bottle a day.

He hid the bottles in the sofa in his apartment, making sure nobody found them, and tried to live through the day. He’d become addicted to the burn as the drink trailed down his throat, and he’d barely grimace as he woke up the next morning with his stomach threatening to open it’s contents onto the ‘fresher’s floor.

The burn was the only thing he felt these days.

And then, he’d found Anakin.

Obi-wan had imagined that Anakin would have coped fine after the war. He would channel it in some way, not onto himself with the company of a razor. He could scarcely believe it when he walked in and saw the blood trickling down his chest as his flesh hand gripped the razor with white knuckles, eyes wild and blue and _terrified_.

And when he’d broken down in his arms, his hands tightly grasping the back of his shirt, Obi-wan almost broke right then and there.

“How long?”

_How long have you been hurting, alone, like me?_

“I…I lost count.”

 _So did I_ , Obi-wan thought, but instead he felt an impulse. So he forces Anakin to look at him, and he kisses him, because he doesn’t know what else to do, and there’s so many emotions running through his blood that he feels he might explode.

Anakin’s surprise is apparent, but when his durasteel hand comes to rest on Obi-wan’s cheek to deepen the kiss, he shivers.

And he breaks.

Obi-wan can feel his heart snap in two in his chest, and he hurriedly breaks away but rests his forehead on Anakin’s. He can see the surprise written on his former padawan’s face, probably at the tears that are welling in his eyes. The only time Anakin has ever seen him display any emotion was when Satine died.

Obi-wan pushed the thought of her aside quickly.

Instead of dwelling on losing Satine, he pushes her to the farthest, darkest part of his mind, looks fiercely at Anakin, and reminds him that he needs him.

(Mainly because he wouldn’t have made it through the war without him, and they only have each other in this, because Obi-wan would never go to anyone on the council. They don’t understand him like Anakin somehow does.)

Finally, after Obi-wan’s hand begins to shake on Anakin’s cheek, he whispers a small okay. He stretches towards the disposal, throwing the razor in and planting a light kiss to Obi-wan’s lips as he returns. “We’ll get through this,” he whispers as they stand up, Obi-wan looking up at Anakin’s face as his former apprentice’s metal hand grips his cheek.

He nods once, forgetting about the taste of the whiskey in his apartment for a moment as Anakin once again descends down and locks his lips onto his.

(He doesn’t tell Anakin about the whiskey. That is one problem, he believes, that only he can solve.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look out for the next update. it will be soon, and it will be a shitstorm.


	3. did you feel the hope, that you are not alone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the last bottle clinks into the trash compactor, he feels alive.
> 
> But someone else doesn’t feel the same.

Obi-wan is sitting on his couch when it happens.

The last of his whiskey bottles went into the trash compactor last week, and he’s been drinking water ever since. The first few days were hard, but he made it through, albeit pale and sweaty. But when he woke up one morning without his first thought being _I need a drink_ , he smiled dryly to himself.

He’d beaten it.

He was drinking some water at the bar in his small kitchenette, flicking through the Holonet channels when his comlink rings.

Obi-wan jumps a little in surprise, before picking it up and answering. “Hello?” he asks, unsure of who would be calling him at this time, and only hears labored breathing on the other end.

Obi-wan knows that breathing.

“Anakin? Are you alright?” Obi-wan says, trying to prompt the man to speak but only getting static-y sobs through the comlink.

_“Obi-wan…I failed you, I…I-I’m so sorry, I-I did it again and I…it’s deep and it’s everywhere and…”_

The older Jedi was up and running in his robes in mere seconds.

“Where are you right now?” he demands through the comlink, slamming open the door to Anakin’s living quarters. The question became rhetorical, because Obi-wan freezes as he hears choked sobs coming from the bathroom.

Obi-wan sheds his robe on the couch and creeps into the bedroom, seeing the ‘fresher door ajar, and he prepares himself for what he could see when he walks in.

The comlink drops to the floor with a clatter, and Obi-wan falls to his knees as he sees Anakin.

The man is all but smeared in blood, shaking as he laid in the pure white marble tub. Cuts and scratches littered his arms and chest. His face and hands were splattered with more blood streaks, but that’s not what sent Obi-wan’s heartbeat through the roof.

It was the two identical long, deep cuts on his forearms..

Obi-wan crawled over to Anakin, who was shaking from the sobs that wracked his chest. “I-I’m sorry,” he whispered, but Obi-wan shushed him. “Shush, Anakin. It’s not your fault,” he whispered, pulling him into his chest, the man’s face pressing into his chest as he cried.

“I-I felt it everywhere, and I had to get it…they were _everywhere_ and I-I couldn’t get them out,” Anakin sobbed, and Obi-wan pressed a kiss to his forehead as he stood up, his mind switching gears into how to get Anakin cleaned up without him going to the Healers.

Obi-wan snatched up the medkit and returned to find Anakin had propped himself up in the tub, his eyes unfocused. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” he whispered, and Obi-wan shushed him as he began to dab bacta on the deep gashes on his forearms. “Don’t be stupid, Anakin, you’re going to be fine,” he whispered, trying to keep his voice level as the blood seeped through the bandages like they weren’t even there.

Anakin’s bloody, shaking hand pressed itself onto Obi-wan’s arm, smearing blood across his white skin, and Obi-wan looked up to meet his former Padawan’s calm, smiling face.

“It’s okay. The pain will be over soon, and I’ll be okay again. It’ll be fine. I’ll die alongside someone I love,” Anakin whispered, but Obi-wan shook him off. “D-Don’t say those things, Anakin,” he stammered, his voice shaking, but his Padawan’s head had hit the back of the tub, and his face looked pale.

Obi-wan did the only thing he could think of.

He grabbed his former apprentice, wrapping his arm around Anakin’s middle and having him balance his entire weight on him, and staggered out of the room. Anakin’s head rested on his shoulder, and he groaned lightly as they made it to the door and out into the hallway.

Obi-wan thanked every deity in existence as he met the eyes of Luminara Unduli in the hallway, who stopped dead as her jaw dropped. “What happened?” she shrieked, moving forward and holding up Anakin’s other side, the two Jedi dragging the man down the hallway.

“It’s…hard to explain,” Obi-wan hissed through gritted teeth. He didn’t want to explain to Luminara what had transpired between the two of them the months following the end of the war, especially when Anakin was currently bleeding out onto the thick green carpet of the residency hallway.

The two Jedi finally made it to the medbay after what seemed like hours of Anakin moaning and mumbling indecipherable comments, and when Obi-wan let him go as the droids took him into the hospital room, he bit his lower lip, tears pricking at his eyes.

He felt Luminara’s hand grasp his shoulder, and her kind eyes sparkled as she looked at him, concerned. “Master Skywalker will pull through, I promise you,” she said, before sweeping off back down the hallway that they had come.

Obi-wan rubbed his hand over his face.

Yes, Anakin might be fine physically, but…his mental state was another question entirely.

And Obi-wan had a lot of questions that needed answering. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, guys. Christmas and stuff got really hectic.
> 
> I'll try to get this next chapter out very soon, hopefully within the next week because of exams. I know you guys love this series, so I'll try my best :)

**Author's Note:**

> Part two will have Obi-wan's point of view. Stay tuned.


End file.
